The Lost Version Of Me

"We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect." — Anaïs Nin

There are pages I wrote when I was twenty-two that I barely recognize anymore. Yellowed journal entries in handwriting that's both familiar and foreign, like encountering your childhood bedroom in a dream. Sometimes I find them stuffed in old books or forgotten folders, these fragments of a writer I used to be. And it feels like archaeology – excavating a version of myself buried beneath years of criticism, doubt, and the relentless pragmatism that comes with growing older.

I miss her sometimes, that girl who wrote to understand who she was.

Without writing, the world was a collection of disconnected moments I couldn't string into meaning.

In those early days, writing wasn't just something I did; it was how I existed. My journals weren't collections of events but roadmaps through my wilderness. When I didn't write, the world slipped into senselessness – experiences piled up without connection or meaning. Writing was my interpreter, my guide through the labyrinth of my own heart. It wasn't a hobby or even a passion – it was survival.

I wrote fiction with abandon – characters appeared fully formed, demanding their stories be told. I drafted stories in fevered three-day sessions, the world of the story more real to me than my own life. The boundaries between reality and imagination were permeable then, and I moved easily between them, never questioning my right to invent worlds or claim stories.

I didn't worry about structure or audience or marketability. I didn't obsessively edit as I typed. I just poured myself onto the page with a raw, messy honesty that I've spent years learning to censor. My metaphors were often clumsy and my plots meandered without destination, but there was something achingly real about the way I wrote – as if each word was a small rebellion against silence.

I once believed writing was life itself. Now I understand it's how I make life make sense.

The Writer I Became

"We travel away from ourselves as much by craft as by crisis." — Anne Michaels

Somewhere along the way, I learned the rules. I collected feedback and criticism like stones in my pocket, each one a small weight I carried with me to the keyboard. I became technically better – my sentences grew tighter, my narratives cleaner, my themes more sophisticated. I published things. People nodded approvingly.

But something vital had gone quiet.

The voice that used to wake me at 3 AM with urgent whispers of stories demanding to be told started speaking in measured, careful tones. I became the writer I thought I was supposed to be: disciplined, strategic, focused. My desk transformed from a place of wild creation to a workstation. Writing became less a communion and more a craft.

I built walls around my vulnerability and called it professionalism.

I mistook silence for maturity, restraint for mastery.

The pressure to write professionally strangled the joy out of creation. The screenplays that once poured out of me now faced a gauntlet of potential rejections before I'd written a single word. My fiction, once wild and intuitive, became paralyzed by questions of market viability and genre expectations. The more I learned about writing as a profession, the harder it became to actually write. Each blank page turned into a judgment before I'd even touched it.

Slowly, writing transformed from necessity to obligation. What had once been breath became burden. The journal entries grew shorter, more perfunctory. Eventually, they stopped altogether. And in their absence, the world became a blur again – experiences washing over me without the alchemy of words to transmute them into understanding.

Five, then six years passed without regular writing. I told myself I was too busy, too practical, too focused on other things. But the truth was simpler and harder to admit: I'd forgotten how to sit with myself. I'd forgotten how to listen to the quiet voice beneath the noise. I'd forgotten how to make sense of my own life.

What Was Lost

What I lost wasn't just a writing style but a way of existing on the page - and in the world.

The way writing helped me make sense of myself. Before, writing wasn't just something I did; it was how I processed my existence. My journals weren't just records of events but maps through my own confusion. Without writing, the world seemed senseless, a barrage of disconnected experiences I couldn't integrate. When I abandoned regular writing, I lost my interpreter, my guide through my own chaotic interior.

The sacred understanding that writing was my compass. There were years when I wrote daily, compulsively, because not writing left me disoriented. I'd wake feeling scattered and go to sleep with fragments of thoughts competing for attention unless I'd put them on the page. Somehow, I let that practice slip away, convinced that "serious writers" followed stricter rules.

The willingness to bleed a little. To reveal the tender, unfinished parts of myself through my characters and stories.

The joy of writing without destination – following an image or a sentence simply to see where it led, with no thought of what it might become.

The belief that what I had to say mattered, not because it was clever or unique, but simply because it was true to my experience.

The courage to write straight through the doubt, to push past the voice that whispers "this is terrible" without stopping to listen or believe it.

What I've Reclaimed

"To begin again is not to return, but to recognize." — Naomi Shihab Nye

It's been a slow, deliberate journey back to myself after nearly six years of silence. Less like finding something lost and more like remembering how to breathe after holding your breath for too long.

Last winter, I started writing letters I never sent. To younger versions of myself, to characters I abandoned halfway through stories. I wrote them longhand, breaking all my carefully constructed rules about productive writing time. I didn't edit. I didn't think about who might read them. I just wrote until my hand cramped and my eyes burned.

And there she was – that forgotten voice. A little older now, a little wiser perhaps, but still mine.

The page is not my whole world, but a lens through which I see it more clearly.

I've been inviting her back into my work, piece by piece.

I've reclaimed messiness. I give myself permission for shitty first drafts again, for writing that sprawls and reaches and doesn't know exactly what it wants to be yet.

I've reclaimed my morning pages – three pages of unfiltered consciousness before the critical mind wakes up fully. No purpose except to clear the channel between heart and hand.

I've reclaimed wonder. I follow curiosities without demanding they justify their existence or profitability. I collect images and fragments that move me without knowing why.

I've reclaimed poetry – those small, dense moments of language that capture what prose cannot. I've returned to the discipline of distillation, of finding exactly the right word, of allowing meaning to emerge from sound and rhythm as much as from definition.

I've reclaimed fiction – those worlds that once came so easily to me. Without the pressure of publication or validation, I'm finding my way back to stories that exist for their own sake, characters who whisper to me in quiet moments.

I've reclaimed screenwriting, not as a career path but as a form I love – the economy of scene descriptions, the rhythm of dialogue, the visual thinking that once felt like second nature.

I've reclaimed intimacy with my reader. I write as if I'm speaking to one person who understands me, not an abstract audience I need to impress.

Most importantly, I've reclaimed writing as my interpreter – my way of making sense not just of the world but of my place in it. When I don't write now, I feel the old senselessness creeping back, the disconnection between moment and meaning. But I no longer panic at this feeling. I simply return to the page, not because writing is my life, but because it helps me live it.

What five years away from regular writing taught me was both the cost of its absence and the value of its return. Those years without the steady rhythm of creating showed me just how much I need this practice, not as identity but as clarity.

The Integration

"The words you find again are never quite the ones you lost." — Billy Collins

The writer I am today isn't the same as that twenty-two-year-old with her fearless heart and untrained eye. I can't unlearn craft or unknow structure. I wouldn't want to. The discipline and skill I've developed over years serve the work.

But I'm learning that technique without soul is just empty performance.

Perhaps the most profound shift has been in my relationship with writing itself. Once, I believed with absolute certainty that writing was life – that to be a writer defined my entire existence. My identity was so thoroughly enmeshed with writing that periods without it felt like a kind of death. I measured my worth by my output, my value by my words. It was a beautiful, terrible devotion.

"Writing isn't your salvation; it's your conversation with the world." — Terry Tempest Williams

Now, beginning again, I've come to understand something gentler but no less profound: writing isn't life itself, but a means to live it more fully. The page is not my whole world, but a lens through which I see it more clearly. Writing is the tool, not the destination – the map, not the territory.

I'm beginning to write again, not with the desperate intensity of someone who believes their existence depends on it, but with the steady commitment of someone who knows their understanding does. The world still feels senseless when I don't write for too long, but I no longer panic at the gaps. I know the way back to myself now.

The fiction writer in me, the screenwriter, the poet, the essayist – these aren't separate identities competing for my attention, but different facets of the same impulse to make meaning. I don't have to choose between them or justify their coexistence. I don't have to write professionally to write purposefully. The pressure to produce has been replaced by the pleasure of the process.

The lost version of me had something essential right – she understood that writing isn't just about what appears on the page but about showing up fully human to the blank space. About bringing your whole self to the conversation, including the parts that are still confused or healing or figuring things out.

I'm not trying to become her again. Instead, I'm attempting something harder – integration. Bringing her wildness into conversation with my hard-won craft. Letting her fearlessness challenge my caution. Allowing her messy authenticity to disrupt my polished restraint.

Some days, this feels impossible. The voices of doubt have grown sophisticated over the years, disguising themselves as practical concerns and reasonable limitations.

"We don't recover lost versions of ourselves – we create new ones that honor their memory." — Mary Karr

But then there are the other moments – when I'm writing from that liminal space between discipline and abandon, when the words feel carefully chosen and somehow inevitable. When I recognize myself fully on the page again, not as I once was, but as I am becoming. When the chaos of experience transforms into meaning through the simple act of placing one word after another.

And I think maybe this is what growth as a writer means: not leaving yourself behind, but bringing yourself along. Reclaiming the lost pieces while honoring how far you've traveled. Understanding that writing isn't your life, but rather how you make your life make sense.

That twenty-two-year-old with her fearless heart is still here. She's just writing with older hands now, and for different reasons – not to prove she exists, but to more deeply experience the existence she already has.

PS: I've been blessed with friends who don't just offer a helping hand, but also encourage me to find my own strength. Their support has been instrumental in my journey, and I'm so grateful to have them by my side. Writing these words feels like a milestone, and it's because of them that I'm able to do so. Thank you for being my pillars of strength. PPS: If you've recently noticed my writing resurgence, it's all thanks to an amazing community - The Write Place, founded and led by the incredible Nirja and Dagny (https://dagnysol.com/the-write-place-home-for-writers/). Their weekly prompts, supportive community of fellow writers, and valuable peer feedback have been the perfect blend for me to reignite my writing habit and discover new aspects of myself.

Whether you're looking to start writing, restart like I did, or simply have fun with words, I highly recommend joining The Write Place. It's a nurturing space that will help you grow as a writer and connect with like-minded people.